Mark Janus, a child-support specialist for the state of Illinois,
doesn’t like paying $45 a month to AFSCME, the union that
represents him. So he’s suing. His case—Janus v.
AFSCME—is expected to be decided this summer by the U.S. Supreme
Court. It will be a controversial decision. Last year, down one member,
the court deadlocked 4-4 on a virtually identical case. This year, Neil
Gorsuch, the newest justice, will likely break the tie.

Note that Janus is not technically paying union dues. Under existing
law, nobody can be forced to join a union or pay its dues. However,
where workers are represented by a union, they can be required to pay
“fair share” or “agency” fees to help cover the
union’s costs for negotiating contracts and representing workers
in disputes with employers. The idea: keep people from getting a free
ride for what the union provides.

What agency fees don’t cover are costs associated with political
activities or organizing employees into a union. Congress has said
paying those costs could breach an employee’s constitutional right
to free speech by forcing them to fund political activities they may not support.

Union supporters argue that the organization representing Janus, an arm
of the National Right to Work Committee, which is supported by a number
of big-name conservative donors, is simply trying to stamp out unions
and lower costs for big business—at a time when corporations,
thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, can spend
as much as they want politicking. (Unions can too. But if they take in
fewer dues or fees, they would find it difficult.)

It’s easy to argue that workers shouldn’t be required to pay
for union activities they don’t support. It’s also easy to
argue that if people feel that strongly about not supporting unions,
they can work somewhere else.

What do you think? Should the Supreme Court side with Janus or his union?

Like most people, you were probably shocked by the many claims of sexual
harassment lodged against public figures last year. You may have been
dismayed, too, to learn that their alleged behaviors in some cases
stretched back over decades. How could these things have remained hidden
for so long?

As it turns out, some of the accused men escaped public
scrutiny—and perhaps were then emboldened to prey on more
victims—because they entered into financial settlements with their
victims--settlementsthat prevented those victims from talking publicly
about their experiences.

These non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, are now highly controversial.
Lawmakers in New York, New Jersey and California are considering
limiting their use in cases of sexual misconduct. By making it harder
for sexual predators to hide their actions, proponents of such laws say
they also would make it harder for predators to continue their bad behavior.

Not everybody agrees. Attorney and women’s rights advocate Areva
Martin, for example, has argued that NDAs and secret settlements in many
ways benefit victims, allowing them to seek justice without going
through the potentially painful process of public proceedings and the
possibility of being retaliated against, or ostracized by, past or
potential employers. She also contends that without the promise of
secrecy, accused predators might no longer agree to sometimes pay large
sums of money to their victims as part of their settlements—money
the victims may need if their complaints result in the loss of their jobs.

Are such personal concerns valid if those secret settlements make it
easier for sexual predators to continue to harm other victims? Should
NDAs continue to be allowed in settling sexual misconduct cases, or
should they be banned?

You’re walking down the street, on your way to a night out with
friends. So you probably have some cash on you. Ahead, a man sits on the
sidewalk, cup in hand, asking for money. Should you give him some?

The compassionate argument is that we should, if we’re able.
Circumstance alone suggests the panhandler is worse off than we
are—financially, maybe emotionally, maybe psychologically. He
likely needs what we can offer more than we do.

The skeptic’s arguments are many. We can’t know how the
panhandler will spend the money. On food? Or liquor? Shelter? Or drugs?
We also can’t know if the panhandler can’t work, or just
doesn’t want to work.

Some people worry that giving money to panhandlers encourages the
activity—and who wants to walk a gauntlet of panhandlers at every
turn? As an article in The Atlantic noted some years ago, “If you
travel to a poor city … you’ll find swarms of beggars by
touristy locations. If the tourists become more generous, the local
beggars don’t get richer, they only multiply.”

To avoid worrying about how money will be spent, or about encouraging
more begging, some people give only to shelters and other charitable
organizations. But this doesn’t help the poor and homeless whose
mental health issues make them wary of seeking out such help. Taking the
compassionate side, Pope Francis said earlier this year that we should
just give when we meet panhandlers, and not worry about why they are
begging or how they will use the money.

What do you think? Assuming we can afford it, is there any reason not to
give panhandlers money? Is doing so that much different from other
charitable giving? Finally, when confronted by a panhandler, how do you
decide whether or not to give?

Our long national battle over whether to make health care insurance
available to everybody regardless of income continues unabated. It does
so, I would argue, primarily because we have not come to an agreement on
this fundamental question: Is access to health care a right?

The rest of the developed world has largely reached an answer, in the
affirmative. As The Atlantic reports, nearly all industrialized
countries provide some sort of universal access to health care,
“from Europe to the Asian powerhouses to South America’s
southern cone to the Anglophone states of Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada. The only developed outliers are a few still-troubled Balkan
states, the Soviet-style autocracy of Belarus, and the U.S. of A.., the
richest nation in the world.”

The U.S. is a curious laggard among the outliers. Surgeon and writer
Atul Gawande recently explored some reasons why in The New Yorker,
interviewing, among others, a couple in Ohio whose medical bills had
forced them to file for bankruptcy. They struggled for years to climb
out of debt. Despite that setback, the husband remains bothered by the
idea of government paying for healthcare—and by people who
don’t work but receive health care via Medicaid at no cost to them.

That resentment is perhaps understandable in someone who takes pride in
paying his own way. Maybe it’s also understandable that some
people think not having a right to health insurance is no different than
not having a right to other necessities, like food, clothing and
shelter. Sure, our government helps those who can’t afford those
things, but we don’t universally provide homes, groceries and
clothing to everybody.

Ironically, there are plenty of other areas in life where we do provide
services for all without complaining about who’s footing the bill.
Fire departments don’t check membership rolls or employment status
when responding to a fire. Poor people are allowed to drive on the same
roads the wealthy drive.

Proponents of universal access to health care believe we should afford
the same consideration to people who are sick and need medical attention.

Suppose scientists in a country adversarial to the U.S. develop a weapon
that gives that country a significant advantage over potential enemies.
Perhaps it’s a missile that can’t be detected by current
technology. Or a computer program that can seize control of the Pentagon
and every U.S. military base, missile, submarine and aircraft. Whatever
the details, let’s just say that if this weapon was used against
us, our country would be virtually defenseless.

Now suppose that a few other countries—four—develop similar
weaponry. Our scientists, inexplicably, are not able to match them. At
this point, the five countries in possession of this technology announce
that in order to safeguard the world from its perils, they want everyone
else, including us, to agree not to develop it. And if anyone else does
try to develop it, those five will try mightily to stop them.

I’m guessing you’d find that a hard pill to swallow.

But that, of course, is exactly what the U.S. and the four other
countries that developed nuclear bombs before 1967 have tried to do with
nuclear weapons. That effort is at the heart of our latest dispute with
North Korea, which never agreed to forego nuclear weapons and has lately
stepped up testing of its nuclear bombs and missiles.

My question to you isn’t whether we should try to keep North Korea
from developing full nuclear weapon capabilities. The erratic behavior
of its leader, Kim Jong-un, is argument enough that a nuclear North
Korea threatens world peace.

Rather, my question is why, as a matter of policy, it is fair and right
for one country that has a devastating weapon to say it’s okay for
them, but not for anybody else. That only they have the moral authority
to use it wisely. Or, if you disagree, why isn’t it fair and right?

As you compose your answer, remember the example at the top of this
article. Consider that North Korea isn’t the only country whose
leader is viewed by many as erratic. Recall that only one country has
ever used nuclear weapons in warfare. And consider that the next time a
stunning new weapon comes along, we might not be the country that
develops it.

Nick Suriano is one of the best college wrestlers in the country. A
four-time undefeated high school state champ in New Jersey, he posted a
17-1 record during his freshman year wrestling at Penn State. Still, he
could find himself riding the bench as a sophomore.

Why? Over the summer, Penn State granted Suriano’s request to be
released from the Penn State wrestling team so he could transfer to
Rutgers. But both schools compete in the Big Ten conference, which like
many major conferences requires that scholarship students who transfer
to an in-conference school sit out of sports for one year and lose a
year of sports eligibility.

Suriano could petition the Big Ten for a waiver from its rule, but
it’s unclear whether he’d get it. In the meantime, his case
has inflamed passions among college wrestling fans—especially in
New Jersey, where many consider it ridiculous that Suriano should be
penalized for deciding that he or she would be happier at another
school. Others point out that many other student-athletes have been
subject to the same transfer rule, and that Suriano shouldn’t
receive special treatment. They also note that if he simply wants to
wrestle closer to home in New Jersey, he could transfer to a non-Big Ten
school like Princeton or Rider.

Let’s look beyond the Suriano case, though, to ask whether these
intra-conference transfer rules make sense in the first place.
Proponents say schools shouldn’t be forced to face an athlete
they’ve helped develop, and that it discourages school-hopping
that could get in the way of academics. Opponents counter that
scholarship athletes aren’t indentured servants and should have
the right to choose their own path—even if that includes changing
their mind.

What’s your take? Should scholarship college athletes have the
right to transfer whenever and wherever they want, as often as they
want, without penalty?

At the end of last year, the value of all the student loans outstanding
in the United States totaled $1.31 trillion—nearly three times the
sum from just 10 years earlier.

A lot of people are racking up a lot of debt.

Is it worth it?

For a long time, the default answer has been yes. Studies repeatedly
show that people who earn a college degree earn substantially more than
those who don’t. Recent research at Georgetown University
indicates that having a four-year degree rather than a high school
diploma translates into nearly $1 million in additional lifetime
earnings. That’s far more than the cost for tuition and fees at
most private colleges, which at recent prices would average about
$130,000 for four years, or the roughly $40,000 a public college would
cost the average in-state student.

But those are tuition numbers; they don’t include room and board.
They also don’t include the interest piling up on student loans.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the average college graduate left
school last year with $37,172 in student loan debt. Perhaps scarier, the
net worth today of college-educated adults under 40 who borrowed to
attend college is less than one-seventh the net worth of those who
didn’t borrow.

Indeed, for many borrowers, the burden of repaying student loans has
proved heavy. In a survey by Prudential Financial last year of more than
1,300 college graduates, less than half of the borrowers had been able
to repay even $1 toward their principal loan balances three years after
graduating. Among those still paying on their debt, nearly four in 10
said they were struggling financially, and nearly two-thirds said it was
an emotional burden. Only about four in 10 said borrowing had proved
worthwhile, and only one in four called college debt “good
debt.” That said, more than 90 percent said they still would have
gone to college, even if they had had a better understanding of what
they were getting into financially.

What about you? If you’re borrowing for college, are you convinced
you made the right choice? And if you had to do it over again, would you
change where you’re going to school, or how you're paying for it,
in hopes of borrowing less?

Remember that Bob decided "the only way to be fair, now and in the
future, is to apply the option that makes sense no matter where he might
be starting from on the day he leaves for the airport."

By this standard, he should bill for 120 miles. As one of the writers
said, if he drove to Florida the day before flying, he shouldn't be
billing for the distance from Florida to the airport in Philadelphia. He
should thus bill for the distance from his home to the airport: Option B.

Suppose you commit a crime. You are arrested. Your mug shot—your
arrest photo—is published the next day on the front page of your
hometown newspaper. That’s embarrassing, right? Public shaming may
not be your biggest problem, but it’s a definite bummer.

Now suppose you didn’t commit that crime but were mistakenly
arrested. Now your face in the local paper is adding insult to injury.
And even though you’re later acquitted, your mug shot lives on in
the minds of everyone who knew you and saw it, and perhaps in one of the
many online mug shot databases. (Police photos of celebrities are
particularly popular.)

This is all possible because arrest reports, including photographs, are
in the public domain in the U.S.—for good reason. Open records are
a way for the public to keep tabs on what the police are doing. Under
authoritarian regimes, people can be arrested and disappear without a trace.

But making police photos available to the public and permitting their
widespread publication are two different matters. Proponents of
publication argue the public has a right to see these photos, and that
there even can be a safety issue at stake. If one of these
“criminals” later escapes police custody, the argument goes,
it will be easier for the public to recognize them. This ignores the
fact that a photo could simply be released if and when such an escape
actually happened.

Opponents of routinely publishing mug shots argue that it can stigmatize
people, especially those who commit minor crimes and later have their
records expunged, or, more egregiously, people later found not guilty.
These photos have the potential to haunt these people—in job
searches, in personal affairs—for the rest of their lives.

What do you think? Should newspapers, websites and police departments
routinely publish photos of people taken shortly after their arrest? Or
should publication be withheld except in cases where there is a clear
and compelling public interest at stake? And if you think it’s the
latter, what sort of circumstances would warrant publication?

A freelance photographer—let’s call him Bob—has a
small but intriguing dilemma.

Bob has a standing assignment from a wildlife organization to photograph
its annual convention on the West Coast. The organization pays for his
travel expenses. This includes reimbursing him for use of his personal
vehicle to drive from his home in York, Pennsylvania, to whichever
airport he uses to fly to the West Coast. He receives reimbursement at
the IRS-approved rate of 53.5 cents per mile.

This year, Bob finds the most convenient and reasonably priced flight to
the convention out of Philadelphia International Airport, which is 120
miles from his home. In a typical year, he would thus bill his client
for 240 miles of driving—120 miles for the drive from his house to
the airport, and 120 miles more for the drive back home.

This year, though, Bob and his wife have planned a trip with friends to
Baltimore, Maryland, the day before his flight. They decide to spend
that night in Baltimore. The next day, Bob drives from his Baltimore
hotel to Philadelphia International, a 90-mile trip. His wife rides home
with their friends.

Here’s Bob’s dilemma. He wants to know how much he should
bill the wildlife organization for use of his vehicle to get to the
airport. One option is to bill them for 90 miles—the actual
distance he drove to the airport the day of his flight. (Let’s
call this Option A.) After all, he was going to be in Baltimore that
morning regardless of whether or not he had to travel for his
conference. It seems only fair that his client should pay just for his
actual travel that day.

The second option is to bill for the 120 miles from his house to the
airport. (Let’s call this Option B.) After all, Bob was
responsible for making that trip. One could argue that his decision to
drive the first 30 miles one day early, as part of a personal trip,
should have no bearing on what he bills his client.

After wrestling with the two options, Bob decides that the only way to
be fair, now and in the future, is to apply the option that makes sense
no matter where he might be starting from on the day he leaves for the
airport. By this standard, which option should he choose—A or
B—and why? (If you wish, you can use additional examples to
illustrate your point.)